review Page 787 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Kenley Jansen, Red Sox staff feeling good as Rays visit
The Tampa Bay Rays probably won't have to worry about Kenley Jansen when they visit the Boston Red Sox on Monday for the start of a four-game series.,Jansen, Boston's closer, pitched in each of his team's past three games, and he earned the save in the Red Sox's victories on Saturday and Sunday.,"It...
Slumping Rangers look to wake up bats vs. Guardians
Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said his team is "officially in a funk" as the defending World Series champions begin a six-game homestand with a three-game series against the Cleveland Guardians on Monday night., ,The Rangers finished a 5-5 road trip in head-scratching fashion, getting swept in t...
Avalanche hope to rediscover offense in Game 4 vs. Stars
The Colorado Avalanche entered Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinal series with the most goals in this year's Stanley Cup playoffs, but the Dallas Stars found a way to shut them down.,Dallas earned a 4-1 win on Saturday night to take a 2-1 lead in the series, and it has a chance to steal ano...
The pros and cons of proposed advancements in the NFL and college football
College football might follow in the footsteps of the NFL as the NFL mulls taking a page out from soccer. After the Michigan sign-stealing scandal, in-helmet communicators could be coming to FBS programs, as well as a two-minute timeout. The Shield meanwhile might eschew the chain gang for optical t...
Selling the Mavs is a Faustian bargain for Mark Cuban
What do Donald Trump, casinos, the Holocaust, and the Dallas Mavericks have in common? The answer can be found in a comic book. In Art Spiegelman’s seminal tome on his family’s survival of the Holocaust, the graphic novel Maus, the underground comix writer analyzes the cyclical effect of trauma, not...
It's not just football fans who are tired of bad officiating
Poor officiating during a Week 18 game between the Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks has NFL referees under scrutiny....
Sportsbooks will find a way to avoid paying out, won't they?
You know what’s more impressive than surpassing your season expectations? How about surpassing them with one fewer game than the rest of the league? Prior to the current NFL season, most sportsbooks listed the Bengals projected win total at 9.5, while the Bills were listed at 11.5. They ended the se...
Can we get some accountability from NFL referees for these bad calls?
Referees are a necessary part of any sporting event. It’s just unfortunate how they sometimes become the focal point of contests. This is apparent in far too many NFL games every week, and it’s at a point where some of their calls are absolutely absurd. NFL refs are constantly throwing flags that ma...
The NFL could easily make its unnecessary roughness penalties more tolerable for the masses
Penalties that turned all of social media into Atlanta Falcons fans and made the crowd at Arrowhead Stadium even angrier than when they booed Unity in 2020 are not new. It only feels like the illegal contact to/with-the-head penalties are a result of the NFL being forced to admit the long-term effec...
The NCAA is being dragged closer to doing the right thing
After a quarter century under their current bylaws, the NCAA will vote on a new constitution tomorrow at their convention that will peel their grip, knuckle by desperately grasping knuckle, off of the reins of college athletics regulation. Could it be that the NCAA is actually doing the right thing ...
So how will the NHL, official partner of PointsBet, Bally’s, and MGM Resorts, handle Evander Kane?
Gambling on your own team’s games has always been the biggest line to cross in team sports. It’s why Pete Rose is still out of the Hall of Fame and probably always will be (though, being pretty much the same unrepentant asshole he was on the field doesn’t help his cause much). While it’s certainly b...
Quit crying about official reviews — they gotta get the call right
Always get the call right....
Behold, a fun few moments of instant replay in baseball
Sometimes, instant replay is a real drag. It takes forever to review some minor call that doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway, the flow of the game is broken, and you wonder if we’d be better off without it, even if sometimes bad calls do get corrected, because even though they do, a lot o...
NHL West Preview: Some top-tier teams, but mostly trash
We move out West, which is probably the most top-heavy of the new-fangled, COVID-adjusted divisions this season. There are three genuine contenders here...and then a whole lot of trash. Colorado, Vegas, and St. Louis will feast on the chum on offer in this intra-division only schedule, and the race ...
NHL Central Preview: This division makes no geographical sense
For the sake of this season, Florida is apparently central, and Dallas is central even though it’s west of St. Paul and St. Louis, which are both in the west this year. This is truly the season of people throwing ducks at balloons and nothing is the way it seems. Whatever the odd alignments, this di...
NHL East Preview: The gang's all here
This division is loaded with veteran teams like Pittsburgh, Washington, and Boston that still expect to compete for the Stanley Cup, teams on the rise in the Islanders and Flyers, and teams bolstered by recent No. 1 overall picks like the Rangers, Devils and Sabres who are hoping to break through....
Lo! The NFL divisional playoff round draws hither
This crazy, six-game slate on Wild Card Weekend lived up to the hype, delivering history and upsets and exciting games, wire to wire. We now have a Divisional Round in the NFL Playoffs that includes the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns. Crazy, right?...
NBA Gambling Guide/Futures Bets to Make for the 2020-21 Season
For the first time in nine years, the NBA is rolling out its regular season with a late-December start date. Obviously, the current instance is sparked by far different circumstances than the lockout of 2011....
Forget LeBron & Giannis, these are NBA players who <em>need </em>to show out in 2020-21
Just as the headline reads....
Coastal Carolina is your national champion, don’t care what anyone says
If you look at Coastal Carolina’s season, it’s almost hard to believe that it was 2020. The Chanticleers’ run was remarkable, starting with a 15-point win on the road against a Big 12 school (Kansas, but still), and then a rampage through the Sun Belt Conference, with only one postponement — and you...